He was changing very rapidly and talked sensibly about everything. Pelle was afraid he was getting too little out of his childhood. "Aren't you going up to play with them?" he asked, when the boys of the neighborhood rushed shouting past the basement window; but Lasse Frederik shook his head. He had played at being everything, from a criminal to a king, so there was nothing more to be had in that direction. He wanted something real now, and in the meantime had dreams of going to sea.

Although they all three worked, they could only just make ends meet; there was never anything over for extras. This was a sorrow to Ellen especially; Pelle did not seem to think much about it. If they only put something eatable before him, he was contented and did not mind what it was.

It was Ellen's dream that they should still, by toiling early and late, be able to work themselves up into another stratum; but Pelle was angry when she worked on after the time for leaving off. He would rather they were a little poor, if only they could afford to be human beings. Ellen did not understand it, but she saw that his mind was turned in another direction; he who had hitherto always fallen asleep over books would now become so absorbed in them that he did not hear the children playing round him. She had actually to rouse him when there was anything she wanted; and she began to fear this new power which had come in place of the old. It seemed like a curse that something should always work upon him to take him beyond her. And she dared not oppose it; she had bitter experience from former times.

"What are you looking for in those books?" she asked, sitting down beside him. Pelle looked up absently. His thoughts were in far-off regions where she had never been. What was he looking for? He tried to tell her, but could not explain it. "I'm looking for myself!" he said suddenly, striking boldly through everything. Ellen gazed at him, wondering and disappointed.

But she tried again. This time nothing should come between them and destroy her world. She no longer directly opposed anything; she meant to go with him and be where he was. "Tell me what you are doing and let me take part in it," she said.

Pelle had been prepared to some extent to go into this by himself, and was glad to meet with a desire for development in her too. For the present the intellectual world resembled more or less a wilderness, and it was good to have a companion with him in traversing it.

He explained to her the thoughts that occupied him, and discussed them with her; and Ellen observed wonderingly that it was all about things that did not concern their own little well-being. She took great pains to comprehend this flight away from the things that mattered most; it was like children who always wanted what they ought not to have.

In the evening, when Boy Comfort and Sister had been put to bed, Pelle would take a book and read aloud. Ellen was occupied with some mending or other, and Lasse Frederik, his ears standing out from his head, hung over a chair-back with his eyes fixed upon his father. Although he did not understand the half of it, he followed it attentively until Nature asserted herself, and he fell asleep.

Ellen understood this very well, for she had great difficulty herself in keeping her eyes open. They were not stories that Pelle read. Sometimes he would stop to write something down or to discuss some question or other. He would have the most extraordinary ideas, and see a connection between things that seemed to Ellen to be as far apart as the poles; she could not help thinking that he might very well have studied to be a pastor. It suited him, however; his eyes became quite black when he was explaining some subject that he was thoroughly interested in, and his lips assumed an expression that made her long to kiss them. She had to confess to herself that in any case it was a very harmless evening occupation, and was glad that what was interesting him this time kept him at home at any rate.

One day Pelle became aware that she was not following him. She did not even believe in what he was doing; she had never believed in him blindly. "She's never really loved me either: that's why!" he thought despondently. Perhaps that explained why she took Boy Comfort as calmly as if he were her own child: she was not jealous! Pelle would willingly have submitted to a shower of reproaches if afterward she had given him a kiss wetted with hot tears; but Ellen was never thrown off her balance.

Happy though they were, he noticed that she, to a certain extent, reckoned without him, as if he had a weakness of which it was always well to take account. Her earlier experiences had left their mark upon her.

* * * * *

Ellen had been making plans with regard to the old room and the two small ante-rooms at the end of it. She was tired of washing; it paid wretchedly and gave a great deal of work, and she received very little consideration. She now wanted to let lodgings to artistes. She knew of more than one woman in their street who made a nice living by taking in artistes. "If I'd only got a couple of hundred krones (10 or 11 pounds) to start it with, I'm sure I should make it pay," she said. "And then you'd have more time and quiet for reading your books," she added coaxingly.

Pelle was against the plan. The better class of artistes took rooms at the artiste hotels, and the people they might expect to get had not much to pay with. He had seen a good deal of them from his basement window, and had mended shoes for some of them: they were rather a soleless tribe. She said no more about it, but he could see that she was not convinced. She only dropped the subject because he was against it and it was he who would have to procure the money.

He could not bear to think this; he had become cautious about deciding for others. The money might be obtained, if in no other way, by giving security in his furniture and tools. If the plan did not succeed, it would be certain ruin; but perhaps Ellen thought him a wet blanket.

One day he threw down his leather apron and went out to raise the money. It was late when he came home, and Ellen was standing at the door waiting for him with a face of anxiety.

"Here's the money, my dear! What'll you give me for it?" he said gaily, and counted out into her hand a hundred and eighty krones (L10) in notes. Ellen gazed in surprise at the money; she had never held so large a sum in her hands before.

"Wherever did you get all that money from?" she asked at last.

"Well, I've trudged all day from place to place," said Pelle cheerfully, "and at last I was directed to a man in Blaagaard Street. He gave me two hundred krones (L11) on the furniture."

"But there's only one hundred and eighty (L10) here!"

"Oh, well, he took off twenty krones (L1 2s.). The loan's to be repaid in instalments of twenty krones (L1 2s.) a month for fifteen months. I had to sign a statement that I had borrowed three hundred krones (L16 10s.), but then we shan't have to pay any interest."

Ellen stared at him in amazement. "Three hundred krones, and we've only got a hundred and eighty, Pelle!" But she suddenly threw her arms round his neck and kissed him passionately. "Thank you!" she whispered. He felt quite dazed; it was not like her to be so vehement.

She had plenty to do, after hiring the room, in putting it in order. The loose beams had to be fixed up, and the walls plastered and whitewashed a little. The old peasant was willing enough to let it, but he would not hear of going to any expense. Ellen at last succeeded, however, in getting him to agree to pay half the repairs on condition that she took the room for a year and payed the rent in advance. "We can get my brother Frederik to do some of the repairs on Sunday morning," she said to Pelle, "and then perhaps we shall get it done for nothing." She was altogether very energetic.

There was need for it too. The rent swallowed up the hundred krones (L5 10s.), and then there were all the things that had to be got. She bought a quantity of cheap print, and hung it up so as to divide one side of the room into a number of small compartments each provided with a second-hand bed and hay mattress, and a washing-stand. "Artistes are not so particular," she said, "and I'm sure they'll be glad to have the room to practise in." Finally there were the two little anterooms, which were to be furnished a little better for more particular artistes. There was not nearly enough money, and some of the things had to be taken on credit.

At last it was all ready to receive the guests. It looked quite smart for the amount spent on it, and Pelle could not but admire her cleverness in making a little go a long way. The only thing now left to do was to catch the birds, but here Ellen's practical sense ceased to act; she had no idea how to proceed. "We must advertise," she said, and counted up her remaining pence.

Pelle laughed at her. A lot of good it would be to advertise for people who were goodness knows where on railways and steamers! "What shall we do then?" she said, looking anxiously to him for help. After all, he was the man for it all.

Well, first of all there must be a German placard down on the street- door, and then they must make the rooms known. Pelle had studied both German and English in the prison, and he made up the placard himself. He had cards printed, and left them in the artistes' tavern at the corner of Vesterbro Street, went there himself two or three times after midnight when the artistes gathered there when their work was finished, and stationed himself at the stage-entrances of the music-halls. He soon came to look upon it as a task to be performed, like everything with which he occupied himself; and this should succeed!

Ellen looked on wondering and helpless. She had all at once grown frightened, and followed each of his movements with anxious attention.

Soon, however, things began to move. The girls whose washing Ellen had done took an interest in the undertaking, and sent lodgers to her; and Lasse Frederik, who had the run of the circus stables, often returned with some Russian groom or other who did a turn as a rustic dancer or a Cossack horseman. Sometimes there lived with her people from the other side of the world where they walk with their heads down—fakirs and magicians from India and Japan, snake-charmers from Tetuan, people with shaven heads or a long black pigtail, with oblique, sorrowful eyes, loose hips and skin that resembled the greenish leather that Pelle used for ladies' boots. Sister was afraid of them, but it was the time of his life to Lasse Frederik. There were fat Tyrolese girls, who came three by three; they jodeled at the music-halls, and looked dreadful all day, much to Ellen's despair. Now and then a whole company would come, and then trapezes and rings creaked in the great room, Spanish dancers went through their steps, and jugglers practised new feats.

They were all people who should preferably not be seen off the stage. Ellen often went to the circus and music-halls now, but could never quite believe that the performers were the same men and women who went about at home looking like scarecrows. Most of them required nothing except that the lodging should be cheap; they boarded themselves, and goodness knows what they lived on. Some of them simply lighted a fire on a sheet of iron on the floor and made a mixture of rice or something of the sort. They could not eat Danish food, Pelle said. Sometimes they went away without paying, and occasionally took something with them; and they often broke things. There was no fortune to be made out of them, but in the meantime Ellen was satisfied as long as she could keep it going, so that it paid the rent and instalments on the loan and left her a little for her trouble. It was her intention to weed out the more worthless subjects, and raise the whole tone of the business when it had got into good order.

"You really might refuse the worst work now, and save yourself a little," she said to Pelle when he was sitting over some worn-out factory shoes that had neither sole nor upper. Most boots and shoes had done service somewhere else before they reached this neighborhood; and when they came to Pelle there was not much left of them. "Say no to it!" said Ellen. "It's far too hardly earned for you! And we shall get on now without having to take everything." In the kindness of her heart she wanted him to be able to read his books, since he had a weakness for them. Her intention was good, but Pelle had no thought of becoming an aesthetic idler, who let his wife keep him while he posed as a learned man. There were enough of them in the neighborhood, and the inhabitants looked up to them; but they were not interesting. They were more or less another form of drunkard.

To Pelle books were a new power, grown slowly out of his sojourn in prison. He had sat there alone with his work, thrown on himself for occupation, and he had examined himself in every detail. It was like having companionship when he brought to light anything new and strange in himself; and one day he chanced upon the mistiness of his own being, and discovered that it consisted of experience that others had gone through before him. The Bible, which always lay on the prisoner's table for company, helped him; its words had the sound of a well-known voice that reminded him strongly of Father Lasse's in his childhood. From the Bible he went on further and discovered that the serious books were men who sat in solitude like himself, and spoke out.

Was solitude so dreadful then when you had such company? Pelle was no longer able to comprehend his own fear of it. As a child he had been a creature in the widest sense, and found companionship in everything; he could converse with trees, animals, and stones. Those fibers had withered, and no longer conveyed nourishment; but then he became one with the masses, and thought and felt exactly as they did. That was crumbling away too now; he was being isolated distinctly, bit by bit, and he was interested in discovering a plan in it. He had made Nature subject to him even as a child, and had afterward won the masses! It was solitude now that had to be taken, and he himself was going about in the midst of it, large and wonderful! It was already leaving indelible traces in his mind, although he had seen nothing of it yet. He felt strangely excited, very much as he had felt when, in his childhood, he arrived in Bornholm with his father and could see nothing, but heard the movement of thronging life behind the mist. A new and unknown world, full of wonders and throbbing with anticipation, would meet him in there.

Pelle's action was not due to his own volition. He might as well try to lift himself up by his hair as determine that now he would be a human being by himself. It was an awakening of new powers. He no longer let sunshine and rain pass unnoticed over his head. A strange thing happened to him—he looked wonderingly at everything that he had formerly passed by as commonplace, and saw it all in a new, brilliant light. He had to go all over it from the beginning, look at every detail. How wonderfully everything was connected, sorrow and joy and apparent trifles, to make him, Pelle, who had ruled over hundreds of thousands and yet had to go to prison in order to feel himself rich! Something had been ignited in him that could never be extinguished, a sacred fire to which everything must bear fuel, whether it would or not. He could not be conquered now; he drew strength from infinity itself.

The bare cell—three paces one way and six the other—with its tiny window and the mysterious peephole in the door which was like a watchful eye upon one always, how much it had held! It had always been the lot of the poor man to create worlds out of the void, beautiful mirages which suddenly broke and threw him back even poorer and more desolate. But this lasted. All the threads of life seemed to be joined together in the bare cell. It was like the dark, underground place in large buildings where the machinery is kept that admits and excludes light and heat to the whole block. There he discovered how rich and varied life is.

Pelle went about in a peculiarly elevated frame of mind. He felt that something greater and finer than himself had taken up its abode within him and would grow on to perfection there.

It was a new being that yet was himself; it remained there and drew nourishment from everything that he did. He went about circumspectly and quietly, with an introspective expression as though he were weighing everything: there was so much that was not permissible because it might injure it! There were always two of them now—Pelle and this wonderful, invisible ego, which lay securely and weightily within him like a living thing, with its roots in the darkness.

Pelle's relations to books were deeply grounded: he had to find out what the world meant now. He was a little distrustful of works of fiction; you got at their subject-matter too easily, and that could not be right. They were made up, too! He needed real stuff, facts. There were great spaces in his brain that longed to be filled with a tangible knowledge of things. His favorite reading was historical works, especially social history; and at present he read everything that came in his way, raw and unsweetened; it would have to sort itself out. It was a longing that had never been satisfied, and now seemed insatiable.

He minded his work punctiliously, however. He had made it a principle never to touch a book as long as any work lay waiting unfinished on the floor. In prison he had dreamt of a reasonable working-day of—for instance—eight hours, so that he would have time and strength to occupy himself with intellectual matters; but now he took it off his night's sleep instead. This was at any rate a field out of which they need not try to keep him; he would have his share in the knowledge of the times. He felt it was a weapon. The poor man had long enough retired willingly into the corner for want of enlightenment, and whenever he put out his head he was laughed back again. Why did he not simply wrest the prerogative from the upper classes? It cost only toil, and in that coin he was accustomed to pay! He was scarcely deficient in ability; as far as Pelle could see at present, almost all the pioneers of the new state of things came from the lower classes.

He discovered with pleasure that his inward searching did not carry him away from the world, for far in there he came out again into the light— the light itself! He followed the secret laws for his own inward being, and found himself once more deep in the question of the welfare of the multitude. His practical sense required this confirmation of the conditions. There were also outward results. Even now history could no longer be used to light him and his ideas home; he knew too much. And his vision grew from day to day, and embraced an ever-widening horizon. Some day he would simply take the magic word from the trolls and wake the giant with it!

He worked hard and was as a rule full of confidence. When the last of the artistes came home from their cafe, he was often sitting working by the light of his shoemaker's lamp. They would stop before the open basement window and have a chat with him in their broken Danish. His domestic circumstances were somewhat straitened; the instalments in repayment of the loan, and the debt on the furniture still swallowed all that they were able to scrape together, and Pelle had no prospect of getting better work. But work is the bearer of faith, and he felt sure that a way would open out if only he kept on with it unweariedly.

He took Ellen's unspoken mistrust of his projects quietly. He felt himself to be greater than she in this; she could not reach up to the level of his head!



VI

Pelle was awake as early as four o'clock, although he had gone to bed late. He slept lightly at this time, when the summer night lay lightly upon his eyelids. He stole out into the kitchen and washed himself under the tap, and then went down to his work. The gray spirit of the night was still visible down in the street, but a tinge of red was appearing above the roofs. "The sun's rising now over the country," he thought, recalling the mornings of his childhood, the fields with their sheen of silvery dew, and the sun suddenly coming and changing them into thousands of sparkling diamond drops. Ah, if one could once more run bare-footed, if a little shrinkingly, out into the dewy grass, and shout a greeting to the dawning day: "Get up, Sun! Pelle is here already!" The night-watchman came slowly past the open window on his way home. "Up already?" he exclaimed in a voice hoarse with the night air, as he nodded down to Pelle. "Well, it's the early bird that catches the worm! You'll be rich one of these days, shoemaker!" Pelle laughed; he was rich!

He thought of his wife and children while he worked. It was nice to think of them sleeping so securely while he sat here at work; it emphasized the fact that he was their bread-winner. With every blow of his hammer the home grew, so he hammered away cheerfully. They were poor, but that was nothing in comparison with the fact that if he were taken away now, things would go to pieces. He was the children's Providence; it was always "Father's going to," or "Father said so." In their eyes he was infallible. Ellen too began to come to him with her troubles; she no longer kept them to herself, but recognized that he had the broader back.

It was all so undeserved—as if good spirits were working for him. Shameful though it was that the wife should work to help to keep the family, he had not been able to exempt her from it. And what had he done for the children? It was not easy to build everything up at once from a bare foundation, and he was sometimes tempted to leave something alone so as to accomplish the rest the more quickly. As it was now, he was really nothing! Neither the old Pelle nor the new, but something indeterminate, in process of formation, something that was greatly in need of indulgence! A removing van full of furniture on its way to a new dwelling.

He often enough had occasion to feel this from outside; both old enemies and old friends looked upon him as a man who had gone very much down in the world. Their look said: "Is that really all that remains of that stalwart fellow we once knew?" His own people, on the other hand, were lenient in their judgment. "Father hasn't got time," Sister would say in explanation to herself when she was playing about down in his work-room —"but he will have some day!" And then she would picture to herself all the delightful things that would happen then. It affected Pelle strangely; he would try to get through this as quickly as possible.

It was a dark and pathless continent into which he had ventured, but he was now beginning to find his way in it. There were ridges of hills that constantly repeated themselves, and a mountain-top here and there that was reached every time he emerged from the thicket. It was good to travel there. Perhaps it was the land he and the others had looked for. When he had got through, he would show it to them.

Pelle had a good memory, and remembered all that he read. He could quote much of it verbatim, and in the morning, before the street had wakened, he used to go through it all in his mind while he worked. It surprised him to find how little history concerned itself with his people; it was only in quite recent times that they had been included. Well, that did not trouble him! The Movement was really something new, and not one of history's everlasting repetitions. He now wanted to see its idea in print, and one day found him sitting with a strange solemnity in the library with Marx and Henry George in front of him. Pelle knew something about this subject too, but this was nevertheless like drawing up a net from the deep; a brilliant world of wonders came up with it. There were incontrovertible logical proofs that he had a right apprehension, though it had been arrived at blindly. The land of fortune was big enough for all; the greater the number that entered it, the larger did it become. He felt a desire to hit out again and strike a fresh blow for happiness!

Suddenly an avalanche seemed to fall from the top to the bottom of the house, a brief, all-pervading storm that brought him back to his home. It was only Lasse Frederik ushering in the day; he took a flight at each leap, called a greeting down to his father, and dashed off to his work, buttoning the last button of his braces as he ran. A little later Ellen came down with coffee.

"Why didn't you call me when you got up?" she said sulkily. "It's not good to sit working so long without having had something to eat."

Pelle laughed and kissed her good-morning. "Fine ladies don't get up until long after their husbands," he said teasingly.

But Ellen would not be put off with a jest. A proper wife would be up before her husband and have something ready for him. "I will have you call me!" she said decidedly, her cheeks very red. It suited her to get roused now and then.

While he drank his coffee, she sat and talked to him about her affairs, and they discussed the plans for the day, after which she went upstairs to help the children to dress.

Later in the morning Pelle laid aside his work, dressed himself and went out to deliver it. While he was out he would go into the Library and look up something in the large dictionaries.

The street lived its own quiet life here close up to the greater thoroughfares—the same life day after day. The fat second-hand dealer from Jutland was standing as usual at his door, smoking his wooden pipe. "Good-morning, shoemaker!" he cried. A yellow, oblique-eyed oriental in slippers and long black caftan was balancing himself carelessly on the steps of the basement milk-shop with a bowl of cream in one hand and a loaf of bread in the other. Above on the pavement two boys were playing hopscotch, just below the large red lamp which all night long advertised its "corn-operator" right up to the main thoroughfare. Two girls in cycling costume came out of a gateway with their machines; they were going to the woods. "Good-day, Pelle! How is Ellen's business getting on?" they asked familiarly. They were girls for whom she had washed.

Pelle was fond of this busy part of the town where new shops with large plate-glass windows stood side by side with low-roofed cottages where retail business was carried on behind ordinary windows with wallflowers and dahlias in them as they might be in any provincial town. A string was stretched above the flower-pots, with a paper of safety-pins or a bundle of shoelaces hanging from it. There were poor people enough here, but life did not run in such hard grooves as out at Norrebro. People took existence more easily; he thought them less honorable, but also less self-righteous. They seemed to be endowed with a more cheerful temperament, did not go so steadily and methodically to and from their fixed work, but, on the other hand, had several ways of making a living.

There was everywhere a feeling of breaking up, which corresponded well with Pelle's own condition; the uncertainty of life enveloped everything in a peculiarly tense atmosphere. Poverty did not come marching in close columns of workmen; its clothing was plentiful and varied; it might appear in the last woollen material from the big houses of old Copenhagen, or in gold-rimmed spectacles and high hat. Pelle thought he knew all the trades, but here there were hundreds of businesses that could not be organized; every day he discovered new and remarkable trades. He remembered how difficult it had been to organize out here; life was too incalculable.

There was room here for everything; next door to one another lived people whom the Movement had not yet gathered in, and people who had been pushed up out of it in obstinate defiance. There was room here for him too; the shadow he had dreaded did not follow him. The people had seen too much of life to interfere in one another's affairs; respectable citizenship had not been able to take possession of the poor man. There was something of the "Ark" about this part of the town, only not its hopelessness; on the contrary, all possibilities were to be found here. The poor man had conquered this ground from the rich citizens, and it seemed as if the development had got its direction from them. Here it was the proletariat whose varied nature forced its way upward, and leavened—so to speak—the whole. In the long side streets, which were full of second-hand dealers and pawnbrokers, existence had not resolved itself into its various constituents. Girls and gamblers were next-door neighbors to old, peaceable townsfolk, who lived soberly on the interest of their money, and went to church every Sunday with their hymn-books in their hands. The ironmonger had gold watches and antique articles among the lumber in his cellar.

Pelle went along Vesterbro Street. The summer holidays were just over, and the pavement on the Figaro side was crowded with sunburnt people— business-men, students and college girls—who were conspicuous in the throng by their high spirits. They had just returned to town, and still had the scent of fresh breeze and shore about them: it was almost as good as a walk in the country. And if he wanted to go farther out into the world, he could do that too; there were figures enough in the Vesterbro neighborhood to arrest his fancy and carry him forth. It was like a quay on which people from all parts of the world had agreed to meet—artists, seamen and international agents. Strange women came sailing through the crowd, large, exotic, like hot-house fruits; Pelle recognized them from the picture of the second-hand dealer's daughter in the "Ark," and knew that they belonged to the international nursing corps. They wore striped costumes, and their thick, fair hair emitted a perfume of foreign lands, of many ports and routes, like the interior of steamers; and their strong, placid faces were big with massage. They floated majestically down the current like full-rigged vessels. In their wake followed some energetic little beings who also belonged to the show, and had decked themselves out to look like children, with puffed sleeves, short skirts, and hair tied up with ribbons. Feeble old men, whom the sun had enticed out, stood in silent wonder, following the lovely children with their eyes.

Pelle felt a peculiar pleasure in being carried along with this stream which flowed like life itself, broad and calm. The world was greater than he had thought, and he took no side for or against anything, but merely wondered over its variety.

* * * * *

He came home from the library at two, with a large volume of statistics under his arm. Ellen received him with red eyes.

"Have your lodgers been making things unpleasant for you again?" he asked, looking into her face. She turned her head away.

"Did you get the money for your work?" she asked instead of answering.

"No, the man wasn't in the shop himself. They're coming here to pay."

"Then we haven't got a farthing, and I've got no dinner for you!" She tried to smile as she spoke, but her heavy eyelids quivered.

"Is that all?" said Pelle, putting his arm round her. "Why didn't you make me some porridge? I should have liked a good plateful of that."

"I have made it, but you'll get hardly anything else, and that's no food for a man."

He took her round the waist with both hands, lifted her up and put her carefully down upon the kitchen table. "That's porridge, my dear!" he said merrily. "I can hardly walk, I'm so strong!"

But there was no smile to be coaxed out of Ellen; something had happened that she did not want to tell him. At last he got out of her that the two musical clowns had gone off without paying. They had spoiled her good bed-clothes by lying in them with their clothes on, and had made them so filthy that nothing could be done with them. She was unwilling to tell Pelle, because he had once advised her against it; but all at once she gave in completely. "You mustn't laugh at me!" she sobbed, hiding her face on his shoulder.

Pelle attempted to comfort her, but it was not so easily done. It was not the one misfortune but the whole fiasco that had upset her so; she had promised herself so much from her great plan. "It isn't all lost yet," he said to comfort her. "We'll just keep on and you'll see it'll be all right."

Ellen was not to be hoodwinked, however. "You know you don't mean it," she said angrily. "You only say it because of me! And the second-hand dealer sent up word this morning that if he didn't soon get the rest of his money, he'd take all the furniture back again."

"Then let him take it, and that'll be an end of the matter."

"But then we shall lose all that we've paid!" she exclaimed quickly, drying her eyes.

Pelle shrugged his shoulders. "That can't be helped."

"Wouldn't it be better to get the things sold little by little? We only owe a third on them."

"We can't do that; it's punishable. We've got a contract for the hire of the furniture, and as long as we owe a farthing on it, it's his. But we're well and strong all of us; what does it matter?"

"That's true enough," answered Ellen, trying to smile, "but the stronger we are, the more food we need."

A girl came running up with a pair of boots that were to be soled as quickly as possible. They were "Queen Theresa's," and she was going to wear them in the evening. "That'll bring us in a few pence!" said Ellen, brightening. "I'll help you to get them done quickly."

They seated themselves one on each side of the counter, and set to work. It reminded them of the early days of their married life. Now and then they stopped to laugh, when Ellen had forgotten some knack. In an hour and a half the boots were ready, and Pelle went himself with them to make sure of the money.

"You'll most likely find her in the tavern," said Ellen. "The artistes generally have their dinner at this hour, and she's probably there."

It was a busy time in the artistes' restaurant. At the small tables sat bony, close-cropped men of a peculiar rubicund type, having dinner with some girl or other from the neighborhood. They were acrobats, clowns, and wrestlers, people of a homogeneous type, dressed in loud checks, with enormous cuffs and boots with almost armor-plated toes. They chewed well and looked up stupidly at the call of the girls; they wore a hard, brutal mask for a face, and big diamond rings on their fingers. Some of them had such a powerful lower jaw that they looked as if they had developed it for the purpose of taking blows in a boxing-match. In the adjoining room some elegant young men were playing billiards while they secretly kept an eye on what was going on at the tables. They had curls on their forehead, and patent leather shoes.

"Queen Theresa" was not there, so Pelle went to Dannebrog Street, where she lived, but found she was not at home. He had to hand in the boots to a neighbor, and go back empty-handed.

Well, it was no more than might have been expected. When you needed a thing most, chance played with you as a cat played with a mouse. Pelle was not nearly so cheerful as he appeared to be when he faced Ellen. The reality was beginning to affect him. He went out to Morten, but without any faith in the result; Morten had many uses for what he earned.

"You've just come at the right moment!" said Morten, waving two notes in the air. "I've just had twenty krones (a guinea) sent me from The Working Man, and we can divide them. It's the first money I've got from that quarter, so of course I've spat upon it three times."

"Then they've found their way to you, after all!" exclaimed Pelle joyfully.

Morten laughed. "I got tired of seeing my work repeated in their paper," he said, "when they'll have nothing to do with me up there; and I went up to them and drew their attention to the paragraph about piracy. You should have seen their expression! Goodness knows it's not pleasant to have to earn your bread on wretchedness, so to speak, but it's still more painful when afterward you have to beg for your hard-earned pence. You mustn't think I should do it either under other circumstances; I'd sooner starve; but at any rate I won't be sweated, by my own side! It's a long time since you were here."

"I've been so busy. How's Johanna?" The last words were spoken in a whisper.

"Not well just now; she's keeping her bed. She's always asking after you."

"I've been very busy lately, and unfortunately I can't find out anything about her. Is she just as cross?"

"When she's in a bad temper she lets me understand that she could easily help to put us on the right track if she wanted to. I think it amuses her to see us fooled."

"A child can't be so knowing!"

"Don't be so sure of that! Remember she's not a child; her experiences have been too terrible. I have an idea that she hates me and only meditates on the mischief she can do me. You can't imagine how spiteful she can be; it's as though the exhalations from down there had turned to poison in her. If any one comes here that she notices I like, she reviles them as soon as they're gone, says some poisonous thing about them in order to wound me. You're the only one she spares, so I think there must be some secret link between you. Try to press her on the subject once more."

They went in to her. As the door opened she slipped hastily down beneath the clothes—she had been listening at the door—and pretended to be asleep. Morten went back to his work and closed the door after him.

"Well, Johanna," said Pelle, seating himself on the edge of the bed. "I've got a message for you. Can you guess who it's from?"

"From grandmother!" she exclaimed, sitting up eagerly; but the next moment she was ashamed at having been outwitted, and crept down under the clothes, where she lay with compressed lips, and stole distrustful glances at Pelle. There was something in the glance and the carriage of her head that awakened dormant memories in him, but he could not fix them.

"No, not grandmother," he said. "By-the-bye, where is she now? I should like to speak to her. Couldn't you go out to her with me when you get well?"

She looked at him with sparkling eyes and a mocking expression. "Don't you wish you may get it!" she answered.

"Tell me where she lives, Johanna," Pelle went on, taking her thin hand in his, "there's a good girl!"

"Oh, yes, at night!"

Pelle frowned. "You must be very heartless, when you can leave your old grandmother and not even like others to help her. I'm certain she's in want somewhere or other."

Johanna looked at him angrily. "I whipped her too," she exclaimed malignantly, and then burst into a laugh at Pelle's expression. "No, I didn't really," she said reassuringly. "I only took away her stick and hid her spectacles so that she couldn't go out and fetch the cream. So she was obliged to send me, and I drank up all the cream and put water in the can. She couldn't see it, so she scolded the milk people because they cheated."

"You're making all this up, I think," said Pelle uncertainly.

"I picked the crumb out of the loaf too, and let her eat the crust," Johanna continued with a nod.

"Now stop that," said Pelle, stroking her damp forehead. "I know quite well that I've offended you."

She pushed away his hand angrily. "Do you know what I wish?" she said suddenly. "I wish you were my father."

"Would you like me to be?"

"Yes, for when you became quite poor and ill, I'd treat you just as well as I've treated grandmother." She laughed a harsh laugh.

"I'm certain you've only been kind to grandmother," said Pelle gravely.

She looked hard at him to see whether he meant this too, and then turned her face to the wall. He could see from the curve of her body that she was struggling to keep back her tears, and he tried to turn her round to him; but she stiffened herself.

"I won't live with grandmother!" she whispered emphatically, "I won't!"

"And yet you're fond of her!"

"No, I'm not! I can't bear her! She told the woman next door that I was only in the way! It was that confounded child's fault that she couldn't get into the Home, she said; I heard her myself! And yet I went about and begged all the food for her. But then I left her!" She jerked the sentences out in a voice that was quite hoarse, and crumpled the sheet up in her hands.

"But do tell me where she is!" said Pelle earnestly. "I promise you you shan't go to her if you don't want to."

The child kept a stubborn silence. She did not believe in promises.

"Well, then, I must go to the police to find her, but I don't want to do that."

"No, because you've been in prison!" she exclaimed, with a short laugh.

A pained expression passed over Pelle's face. "Do you think that's so funny?" he said, winking his eyes fast. "I'm sure grandmother didn't laugh at it."

Johanna turned half round. "No, she cried!" she said. "There was no one to give us food then, and so she cried."

It began to dawn upon him who she was. "What became of you two that day on the common? We were going to have dinner together," he said.

"When you were taken up? Oh, we couldn't find you, so we just went home." Her face was now quite uncovered, and she lay looking at him with her large gray eyes. It was Hanne's look; behind it was the same wondering over life, but here was added to it a terrible knowledge. Suddenly her face changed; she discovered that she had been outwitted, and glared at him.

"Is it true that you and mother were once sweethearts?" she suddenly asked mischievously.

Pelle's face flushed. The question had taken him by surprise. "I'll tell you everything about your mother if you'll tell me what you know," he said, looking straight at her.

"What is it you want to know?" she asked in a cross-questioning tone. "Are you going to write about me in the papers?"

"My dear child, we must find your grandmother! She may be starving."

"I think she's at the 'Generality,'" said the child quietly. "I went there on Thursday when the old things had leave to go out and beg for a little coffee; and one day I saw her."

"Didn't you go up to her then?"

"No; I was tired of listening to her lamentations!"

Johanna was no longer stiff and defiant. She lay with her face turned away and answered—a little sullenly—Pelle's questions, while she played nervously with his fingers. Her brief answers made up for him one connected, sad story.

Widow Johnsen was not worth much when once the "Ark" was burnt down. She felt old and helpless everywhere else, and when Pelle went to prison, she collapsed entirely. She and the little girl suffered want, and when Johanna felt herself in the way, she ran away to a place where she could be comfortable. Her grandmother had also been in her way. She had her mother's whimsical, dreamy nature, and now she gave up everything and ran away to meet the wonderful. An older playfellow seduced her and took her out to the boys of the timber-yard. There she was left to take care of herself, often slept out in the open, and stole now and then, but soon learned to earn money for herself. When it became cold she went as scullery-maid to the inns or maid-of-all-work to the women in Dannebrog Street. Strange to say, she always eluded the police. At first there were two or three times when she started to return to her grandmother, but went no farther than the stairs; she was afraid of being punished, and could not endure the thought of having to listen to the old lady's complaints. Later on she became accustomed to her new way of living, and no longer felt any desire to leave it, probably because she had begun to take strong drink. Now and again, however, she stole in to the Home and caught a glimpse of her grandmother. She could not explain why she did it, and firmly maintained that she could not endure her. The old woman's unreasonable complaint that she was an encumbrance to her had eaten deeply into the child's mind. During the last year she had been a waitress for some time at a sailors' tavern down in Nyhavn with an innkeeper Elleby, the confidence-man who had fleeced Pelle on his first arrival in the city. It was Elleby's custom to adopt young girls so as to evade the law and have women-servants for his sailors; and they generally died in the course of a year or two: he always wore a crape band round his sleeve. Johanna was also to have been adopted, but ran away in time.

She slowly confessed it all to Pelle, coarse and horrible as it was, with the instinctive confidence that the inhabitants of the "Ark" had placed in him, and which had been inherited by her from her mother and grandmother. What an abyss of horrors! And he had been thinking that there was no hurry, that life was richer than that! But the children, the children! Were they to wait too, while he surveyed the varied forms of existence—wait and go to ruin? Was there on the whole any need of knowledge and comprehensiveness of survey in order to fight for juster conditions? Was anything necessary beyond the state of being good? While he sat and read books, children were perhaps being trodden down by thousands. Did this also belong to life and require caution? For the first time he doubted himself.

"Now you must lie down and go to sleep," he said gently, and stroked her forehead. It was burning hot and throbbed, and alarmed he felt her pulse. Her hand dropped into his, thin and worn, and her pulse was irregular. Alas, Hanne's fever was raging within her!

She held his hand tight when he rose to go. "Were you and mother sweethearts, then?" she asked in a whisper, with a look of expectation in the bright eyes that she fixed upon him. And suddenly he understood the reiterated question and all her strange compliance with his wishes.

For a moment he looked waveringly into her expectant eyes. Then he nodded slowly. "Yes, Johanna; you're my little daughter!" he said, bending down over her. Her pale face was lighted with a faint smile, and she shyly touched his stubbly chin and then turned over to go to sleep.

In a few words Pelle told Morten the child's previous history—Madam Johnsen and her husband's vain fight to get on, his horrible death in the sewer, how Hanne had grown up as the beautiful princess of the "Ark"—Hanne who meant to have happiness, and had instead this poor child!

"You've never told me anything about Hanne," said Morten, looking at him.

"No," said Pelle slowly. "She was always so strangely unreal to me, like an all too beautiful dream. Do you know she danced herself to death! But you must pretend to the child that I'm her father."

Morten nodded. "You might go out to the Home for me, and hear about the old lady. It's a pity she should have to spend her old age there!" He looked round the room.

"You can't have her here, however," said Pelle.

"It might perhaps be arranged. She and the child belong to one another."

Pelle first went home to Ellen with the money and then out to the Home.

Madam Johnsen was in the infirmary, and could not live many days. It was a little while before she recognized Pelle, and she seemed to have forgotten the past. It made no impression whatever on her when he told her that her grandchild had been found. She lay most of the time, talking unintelligibly; she thought she still had to get money for the rent and for food for herself and the child. The troubles of old age had made an indelible impression upon her. "She gets no pleasure out of lying here and being comfortable," said an old woman who lay in the next bed to hers. "She's always trying and trying to get things, and when she's free of that, she goes to Jutland."

At the sound of the last word, Madam Johnsen fixed her eyes upon Pelle. "I should so like to see Jutland again before I die," she said. "Ever since I came over here in my young days, I've always meant to use the first money I had over on an excursion home; but I never managed it. Hanne's child had to live too, and they eat a lot at her age." And so she was back in her troubles again.

The nurse came and told Pelle that he must go now, and he rose and bent over the old woman to say farewell, strangely moved at the thought that she had done so much for him, and now scarcely knew him. She felt for his hand and held it in both hers like a blind person trying to recognize, and she looked at him with her expressionless eyes that were already dimmed by approaching death. "You still have a good hand," she said slowly, with the far-sounding voice of old age. "Hanne should have taken you, and then things would have been very different.'"



VII

People wondered, at the library, over the grave, silent working-man who took hold of books as if they were bricks. They liked him and helped him to find what he wanted.

Among the staff there was an old librarian who often came and asked Pelle if there were anything he could help him with. He was a little wizened man with gold spectacles and thin white hair and beard that gave a smiling expression to his pale face. He had spent his time among the stacks of books during the greater part of his life; the dust of the books had attacked his chest, and every minute his dry cough sounded through the room.

Librarian Brun was a bachelor and was said to be very rich. He was not particularly neat or careful in his dress, but there was something unspoiled about his person that made one think he could never have been subjected to the world's rough handling. In his writings he was a fanatical worshipper of the ego, and held up the law of conscience as the only one to which men should be subject. Personally he was reserved and shy, but something drew him to Pelle, who, he knew, had once been the soul in the raising of the masses; and he followed with wonder and curiosity the development of the new working-man. Now and then he brought one of his essays to Pelle and asked him to read it. It often treated of the nature of personality, took as its starting-point the ego of some philosopher or other, or of such and such a religion, and attempted to get at the questions of the day. They conversed in whispers on the subject. The old, easily-approached philosopher, who was read by very few, cherished an unrequited affection for the general public, and listened eagerly to what a working-man might be able to make out of his ideas. Quiet and almost timid though his manner was, his views were strong, and he did not flinch from the thought of employing violent measures; but his attitude toward the raising of the lower classes was sceptical. "They don't know how to read," he said. "The common people never touch a real book." He had lived so long among books that he thought the truths of life were hidden away in them.

They gradually became well acquainted with one another. Brun was the last descendant of an old, decayed family, which had been rich for many generations. He despised money, and did not consider it to be one of the valuable things of life. Never having known want, he had few pretensions, and often denied himself to help others. It was said that he lived in a very Spartan fashion, and used a large proportion of his income for the relief of the poor. On many points he agreed with the lower classes, not only theoretically but purely organically; and Pelle saw, to his amazement, that the dissolution of existing conditions could also take place from the upper grades of society. Perhaps the future was preparing itself at both extremities!

One day Brun carefully led the conversation on to Pelle's private affairs: he seemed to know something about them. "Isn't there anything you want to start?" he asked. "I should be so glad if you would allow me to help you."

Pelle was not yet clear as to what was to be done about the future. "At present," he said, "the whole thing is just a chaos to me."

"But you must live! Will you do me the favor of taking a loan from me at any rate, while you're looking about you? Money is necessary to make one capable and free," he continued, when Pelle refused it. "It's a pity, but so it is. You don't take what you want anyhow, so you must either get the money in the way that offers, or do without."

"Then I'll do without," said Pelle.

"It seems to me that's what you and yours have always done, and have you ever succeeded in heaping coals of fire on the head of society by it? You set too high a value upon money; the common people have too great respect for the property of others. And upon my word it's true! The good old poor man could scarcely find it in his heart to put anything into his own miserable mouth; his wife was to have all the good pieces. So he is mourned as lost to our side; he was so easy to get wealth by. His progeny still go about with a good deal of it."

"Money makes you dependent," Pelle objected.

"Not always," answered Brun, laughing. "In my world people borrow and take on credit without a thought: the greater the debt, the better it is; they never treat a man worse than when they owe him money. On that point we are very much more emancipated than you are, indeed that's where the dividing line goes between the upper classes and the common people. This fear of becoming indebted to any one, and carefulness to do two services in return for one, is all very nice and profitable in your own world; but it's what you'll be run down by in your relations to us. We don't know it at all; how otherwise would those people get on who have to let themselves be helped from their cradle to their grave, and live exclusively upon services received?"

Pelle looked at him in bewilderment. "Poor people have nothing but their sense of honor, and so they watch over it," he said.

"And you've really never halted at this sense of honor that works so splendidly in our favor?" asked Brun in surprise. "Just examine the existing morals, and you'll discover that they must have been invented by us—for your use. Yes, you're surprised to hear me say that, but then I'm a degenerate upper-class man, one of those who fall outside the established order of things. I saw your amazement at my not having patted you on the shoulder and said: 'Poor but proud! Go on being so, young man!' But you mustn't draw too far-reaching conclusions from that; as I told you, I'm not that sort. Now mayn't I give you a helping hand?"

No, Pelle was quite determined he should not. Something had been shattered within him, and the knowledge made him restive.

"You're an obstinate plebeian," said Brun, half vexed.

On his way home Pelle thought it all over. Of course he had always been quite aware that the whole thing resembled a gentleman's carriage, in which he and others like him had to be the horses; the laws and general arrangement were the reins and harness, which made them draw the carriage well. The only thing was that it was always denied from the other side; he was toiling at history and statistics in order to furnish incontrovertible proof of this. But here was some one who sat in the carriage himself, and gave evidence to the effect that it was right enough; and this was not a book, but a living man with whom he stood face to face. It gave an immense support to his belief.

There was need enough for it too, for at home things were going badly. The letting of rooms was at a standstill, and Ellen was selling the furniture as fast as she could. "It's all the same to me what the law is!" was her reply to Pelle's warnings. "There surely can be no sense in our having to make the furniture-dealer a present of all we've paid upon it, just because he has a scrap of paper against us. When the furniture's sold, he shall have the rest of what we owe him."

He did not get the whole, however, for in the first place they had to live. The remainder of the debt hung like a threat over them; if he discovered that the furniture was sold, it might end badly for them. "Remember I've been in prison before," said Pelle.

"They surely can't punish you for what I've done?" said Ellen, looking at him in terror. "Pelle, Pelle, what have I done! Why didn't I do what you told me!" For a time she collapsed, but then suddenly rose energetically, saying: "Then we must get it paid at once. It's surely possible to find twenty krones (a guinea)!" And hastening up to their flat, she quickly returned in her hat and jacket.

"What are you going to do?" asked Pelle in amazement.

"What am I going to do? I'm going to 'Queen Theresa.' She can get it! Don't be afraid!" she said, bending down and kissing him. She soon returned with the money. "I may pay it back by washing," she said cheerfully.

So that matter was settled, and they would have been glad if the loan had been the same. It scarcely moved, however; the instalments ate themselves up in some wonderful way. Two or three times they had had to ask for a postponement, and each time the usurer added the amount of the instalment to the sum still owing; he called it punishment interest.

Pelle read seldom; he felt no wish to do so. He was out early and late looking for a job. He fetched and took back furniture in the town for the second-hand dealer, and did anything else that came to hand.

One evening Ellen came up with a newspaper cutting that "Queen Theresa" had sent her, an advertisement of a good, well-paid situation for a trustworthy man, who had been trained as a shoemaker. "It's this morning's," said Ellen anxiously, "so I only hope it isn't too late. You must go out there at once." She took out Pelle's Sunday clothes quickly, and helped him to make himself tidy. It was for a boot-factory in Borger Street. Pelle took the tram in order to get there quickly, but he had no great hopes of getting the place. The manufacturer was one of his most bitter opponents among the employers at the time when he was organizing the trade—a young master-shoemaker who had had the good sense to follow the development and take the leap over to manufacturer.

"Oh, it's you, is it?" he said. "Well, well, old differences shan't stand between us if we can come to an agreement in other ways. What I want is a man who'll look a little after everything, a kind of right- hand man who can take something off my shoulders in a general way, and superintend the whole thing when I'm travelling. I think you'll do capitally for that, for you've got influence with the men; and I'd like things to go nicely and smoothly with them, without giving in to them too much, you understand. One may just as well do things pleasantly; it doesn't cost an atom more, according to my experience, and now one belongs to the party one's self."

"Do you?" said Pelle, hardly able to believe his ears.

"Yes! Why shouldn't an employer be a fellow-partisan? There's nothing to be afraid of when once you've peeped in behind the scenes; and it has its advantages, of course. In ten years' time every sensible man will be a social democrat."

"That's not at all unlikely," said Pelle, laughing.

"No, is it! So one evening I said to my wife: 'I say, you know it won't do soon to own that you don't belong to the party; in other countries millionaires and counts and barons already belong to it.' She didn't quite like it, but now she's quite satisfied. They're quite nice people, as she said herself. There are even persons of rank among them. Well, it wasn't conviction that drove me at first, but now I agree because what they say's very sensible. And upon my word it's the only party that can thrash the anarchists properly, don't you think so? In my opinion all should unite in fighting against them, and that'll be the end of it, I suppose. I've reflected a good deal upon politics and have come to the conclusion that we employers behaved like asses from the beginning. We oughtn't to have struggled against the Movement; it only drove it to extremes. Just see how well-behaved it's become since we began to take off our hats to it! You become what you're treated as, let me tell you. You wouldn't have acted so harshly if we others had been a little kinder to you. Don't you allow that? You're exactly like every one else: you want to have good food and nice clothes—be considered respectable people. So it was wise to cut off the lower end; you can't rise when you've too much lumber as ballast. Fellows who pull up paving- stones and knock you down are no company for me. You must have patience and wait until the turn comes to your party to come in for a share: those are my politics. Well, what do you think about the job?"

"I don't understand the machines," said Pelle.

"You'll soon get into that! But it's not that that matters, if only you know how to treat the workmen, and that of course you do. I'll pay you thirty-five krones (L2) a week—that's a good weekly wage—and in return you'll have an eye to my advantage of course. One doesn't join the party to be bled—you understand what I mean? Then you get a free house—in the front building of course—so as to be a kind of vice-landlord for the back building here; there are three stairs with one-roomed flats. I can't be bothered having anything to do with that; there's so much nonsense about the mob. They do damage and don't pay if they can help it, and when you're a little firm with them they fly to the papers and write spiteful letters. Of course I don't run much risk of that, but all the same I like things to go smoothly, partly because I aspire to become a member of the management. So you get eighteen hundred krones (L100) a year and a flat at four hundred (L22), which makes two thousand two hundred krones (Ll22)—a good wage, though perhaps I oughtn't to say so myself; but good pay makes good work. Well, is it a bargain?"

Pelle wanted to have till the next day to think it over.

"What do you want to think over? One ought never to think over things too much; our age requires action. As I said before, an expert knowledge is not the main thing; it's your authority that I chiefly want. In other words, you'll be my confidential man. Well, well, then you'll give me your answer to-morrow."

Pelle went slowly homeward. He did not know why he had asked time to think it over; the matter was settled. If you wanted to make a home, you must take the consequences of it and not sneak away the first time a prospect offered of making it a little comfortable for your wife and children. So now he was the dog set to watch his companions.

He went down the King's New Market and into the fashionable quarter. It was bright and gay here, with the arc-lamps hanging like a row of light- birds above the asphalt, now and then beating their wings to keep themselves poised. They seemed to sweep down the darkness of night, and great shadows flickered through the street and disappeared. In the narrow side streets darkness lay, and insistent sounds forced their way out of it—a girl's laugh, the crying of a lonely child, the ceaseless bickering of a cowed woman. But people strolled, quietly conversing, along the pavement in couples and heard nothing. They had got out their winter coats, and were luxuriating in the first cold weather.

Music sounded from the large cafes, which were filled to overflowing. People were sitting close together in small select companies, and looked gay and happy. On the tables round which they sat, stood the wine-cooler with the champagne bottle pointing obliquely upward as though it were going to shoot down heaven itself to them. How secure they appeared to feel! Had they no suspicion that they were sitting upon a thin crust, with the hell of poverty right beneath them? Or was that perhaps why they were enjoying themselves—to-day your turn, to-morrow mine? Perhaps they had become reconciled to the idea, and took what they could get without listening too carefully to the hoarse protests of the back streets!

Under one of the electric lamp-posts on the Town Hall Square a man was standing selling papers. He held one out to Pelle, saying: "A halfpenny if you can afford it, if not you can have it for nothing!" He was pale, with dark shadows under his eyes, and he had a dark beard. He looked as if he were suffering from some internal complaint which was slowly consuming him. Pelle looked at him, and saw to his surprise that it was Peter Dreyer, his comrade of long ago!

"Do you go about selling newspapers?" he exclaimed in astonishment, holding out his hand.

Peter Dreyer quietly returned his greeting. He had the same heavy, introspective look that he had had when Pelle met him in the garret in Jager Street, but looked even more perplexed.

"Yes, I've become a newspaper man," he said, "but only after working hours. It's a little paper that I write and print myself. It may perhaps do you good to read it."

"What's it about?"

"About you and me."

"It's anarchistic, I suppose?" said Pelle, looking at the title of the paper. "You were so strange last time I met you."

"Well, you can read it. A halfpenny if you can afford it, if not gratis!" he cried, holding out a copy to the passers-by. A policeman was standing a little way off observing him. He gradually drew nearer.

"I see you're under observation!" said Pelle, drawing his attention to the policeman.

"I'm used to that. Once or twice they've seized my inoffensive little paper."

"Then it can't have been altogether inoffensive?" said Pelle, smiling.

"I only advise people to think for themselves."

"That advice may be dangerous enough too, if it's followed."

"Oh, yes. The mean thing is that the police pursue me financially. As soon as I've got work with any master, a policeman appears and advises him to discharge me. It's their usual tactics! They aim at the stomach, for that's where they themselves have their heart."

"Then it must be very hard for you to get on," said Pelle sympathetically.

"Oh, I get along somehow. Now and then they put me in prison for no lawful reason, and when a certain time has passed they let me out again —the one with just as little reason as the other. They've lost their heads. It doesn't say much for machinery that's exclusively kept going to look after us. I've a feeling that they'd like to put me out of the way, if it could be done; but the country's not large enough to let any one disappear in. But I'm not going to play the hunted animal any longer. Although I despise our laws, which are only a mask for brute force, I'm very careful to be on the right side; and if they use violence against me again, I'll not submit to it."

"The conditions are so unequal," said Pelle, looking seriously at him.

"No one need put up with more than he himself likes. But there's something wanting in us here at home—our own extreme consequence, self- respect; and so they treat us as ignominiously as they please."

They went on together. On the pavement outside one of the large cafes stood an anaemic woman with a child upon her arm, offering for sale some miserable stalks which were supposed to represent flowers. Peter Dreyer pointed silently from her to the people in the cafe. His face was distorted.

"I've no objection to people enjoying life," said Pelle; "on the contrary, I'm glad to see that there are some who are happy. I hate the system, but not the people, you see, unless it were those who grudge us all anything, and are only really happy in the thought that others are in want."

"And do you believe there's any one in there who seriously doesn't grudge others anything? Do you believe any of them would say: 'I'm fortunate enough to earn twenty-five thousand krones (L1,400) a year and am not allowed to use more than five thousand (L300), so the rest belongs to the poor'? No, they're sitting there abusing the poor man while they drink up the surplus of his existence. The men abuse the workmen, and their wives the servant girls. Just go in among the tables and listen! The poor are bestial, unreliable, ungrateful in spite of everything that is done for them; they are themselves to blame for their misery. It gives a spice to the feast to some of them, others dull their uneasy conscience with it. And yet all they eat and drink has been made by the poor man; even the choicest dainties have passed through his dirty hands and have a piquant flavor of sweat and hunger. They look upon it as a matter of course that it should be so; they are not even surprised that nothing is ever done in gratitude for kind treatment— something to disagree with them, a little poison, for instance. Just think! There are millions of poor people daily occupied in making dainties for the rich man, and it never occurs to any of them to revenge themselves, they are so good-natured. Capital literally sleeps with its head in our lap, and abuses us in its sleep; and yet we don't cut its throat!"

At Victoria Street they stopped. The policeman had followed them and stopped on the other side of the street when they stopped. Pelle drew the other's attention to the fact.

Peter looked across carelessly. "He's like an English bloodhound," he said quietly—"a ferocious mouth and no brain! What vexes me most is that we ourselves produce the dogs that are to hunt us; but we shall soon begin to agitate among the military." He said good-night and turned toward Enghave Road, where he lived.

Ellen met Pelle at the top of the street. "How did you get on?" she asked eagerly. "Did you get the place?"

He quietly explained matters to her. She had put her arm round him. "You great big man," she said, looking up at him with a happy face. "If you only knew how proud I am of you! Why, we're rich now, Pelle—thirty-five krones (2 Pounds) a week! Aren't you glad yourself?"

"Yes, I'm glad that you and the children will be a little comfortable for once."

"Yes, but you yourself—you don't seem to be very delighted, and yet it's a good place you're getting."

"It won't be an easy place for me, but I must make the best of it," he answered.

"I don't see why not. You're to be on the side of the manufacturer, but that's always the way with that kind of position; and he's got a right too to have his interests looked after."

When they got in Ellen brought him his supper, which had been standing on the stove to keep warm. Now and then she looked at him in wonder; there was something about him to-day that she did not understand. He had on the whole become a little peculiar in his views about things in the prison, and it was not to be wondered at. She went to him and stroked his hair.

"You'll be satisfied on your own account too, soon," she said. "It's fortunate for us that he can't be bothered to look after things himself."

"He's taken up with politics," answered Pelle absently. "At present he's thinking of getting into the Town Council by the help of the working- men's votes."

"Then it's very wise of him to take you," Ellen exclaimed vivaciously. "You understand these matters and can help him. If we save, we may perhaps have so much over that we could buy the business from him some day."

She looked happy, and treated him to a little petting, now in one way and now in another. Her joy increased her beauty, and when he looked at her it was impossible for him to regret anything. She had sacrificed everything for him, and he could do nothing without considering her. He must see her perfectly happy once more, let it cost what it might, for he owed her everything. How beautiful she was in her unaffectedness! She still had a fondness for dressing in black, and with her dark hair about her pale face, she resembled one of those Sisters who have suffered much and do everything out of compassion.

It struck him that he had never heard her really laugh; she only smiled. He had not awakened the strongest feeling in her yet, he had not succeeded in making her happy; and therefore, though she had shared his bed and board, she had kept the most beautiful part to herself, like an unapproachable virgin. But now her cheeks glowed with happy expectation, and her eyes rested upon him eagerly; he no longer represented for her the everyday dullness, he was the fairy-story that might take her by surprise when the need was greatest. He felt he could hardly pay too dearly for this change. Women were not made for adversity and solitude; they were flowers that only opened fully when happiness kissed them. Ellen might shift the responsibility over onto his shoulders.

The next day he dressed himself carefully to go out and make the final agreement with the manufacturer. Ellen helped him to button his collar, and brushed his coat, talking, as she did so, with the lightheartedness of a bird, of the future. "What are we going to do now? We must try and get rid of this flat and move out to that end of the town," she said, "or else you'll have too far to walk."

"I forgot to tell you that we shall live out there," said Pelle. "He has three stairs with one-roomed apartments, and we're to be the vice- landlord of them. He can't manage the tenants himself." Pelle had not forgotten it, but had not been able to bring himself to tell her that he was to be watch-dog.

Ellen looked at him in petrified astonishment. "Does that go with the post?" she gasped.

Pelle nodded.

"You mustn't do it!" she cried, suddenly seizing him by the arms. "Do you hear, Pelle? You mustn't do it!" She was greatly disturbed and gazed beseechingly at him. "I don't understand you at all."

He looked at her in bewilderment and murmured something in self-defence.

"Don't you see that he only wants to make use of you?" she continued excitedly. "It's a Judas post he's offered you, but we won't earn our bread by turning poor people into the street. I've seen my own bits of furniture lying in the gutter. Oh, if you'd gone there!" She gazed shudderingly straight before her.

"I can't understand what you can have been thinking about—you who are generally so sensible," she said when she had once more calmed down, looking reproachfully at him; but the next instant she understood it all, and sank down weeping.

"Oh, Pelle, Pelle!" she exclaimed, and hid her face.



VIII

Pelle read no more and no longer went to the library. He had enough to do to keep things going. There was no question now of trying to get a place; winter was at the door, and the army of the unemployed grew larger every day. He stayed at home, worked when there was anything to do, and for the rest minded the children for Ellen while she washed. He talked to Lasse Frederik as he would to a comrade, but it was nice to have to look after the little ones too. They were grateful for it, and he discovered that it gave him much pleasure. Boy Comfort he was very fond of now, his only sorrow being that the boy could not talk yet. His dumbness was always a silent accusation.

"Why don't you bring books home?" Ellen would say when she came up from the wash-house to look after them, with her arms bare and tiny drops in her hair from the steam down there. "You've plenty of time now."

No, what did he want with books? They did perhaps widen his horizon a little, but what lay behind it became so very much greater again; and he himself only grew smaller by reading. It was impossible in any case to obtain any reassuring view of the whole. The world followed its own crooked course in defiance of all wisdom. There was little pleasure in absorbing knowledge about things that one could not remedy; poor people had better be dull.

He and Morten had just been to Madam Johnsen's funeral. She had not succeeded in seeing Jutland. Out of a whole life of toil there had never been ten krones (10s.) over for a ticket home; and the trains ran day after day with hundreds of empty places. With chilling punctuality they whirled away from station to station. Heaven knows how many thousand empty seats the trains had run with to Jutland during the years in which the old woman longed to see her home! And if she had trudged to the railway-station and got into the train, remorseless hands would have removed her at the first station. What had she to do with Jutland? She longed to go there, it was true, but she had no money!

Was it malice or heartless indifference? A more fiendish sport can at any rate hardly be imagined than this running with empty places. It was they that made the journey so terribly vivid—as though the devil himself were harnessed to the train and, panting with wantonness, dragging it along through the country to places that people were longing to see. It must be dreadful to be the guard and call the names of the stations in to those seats for the people left behind!

And Sister walked about the floor so pale and thin! There was no strength in her fair hair, and when she was excited, her breath whistled in her windpipe with that painful sound that was practically inseparable from the children of the poor neighborhoods. It was always the vitiated air of the back-yards that had something to say now—depressing, like almost everything his understanding mastered. All she wanted was sunshine, and all the summer it had been poured down in open-handed generosity, only it went over the heads of poor people like everything else. It had been a splendid year for strawberries, but the large gardeners had decided to let half of them rot on their stalks in order to keep up the prices and save the money spent on picking them. And here were the children hungering for fruit, and ailing for want of it! Why? No, there was no possible answer to be given to that question.

And again—everywhere the same! Whenever he thought of some social institution or other, the same melancholy spectacle presented itself—an enormous rolling stock, only meant for a few, and to a great extent running empty; and from the empty places accusing eyes gazed out, sick and sad with hunger and want and disappointed hope. If one had once seen them, it was impossible to close one's eyes to them again.

Sometimes his imagination took another direction, and he found himself planning, for instance, kingdoms in which trains were used according to the need for them, and not according to the purse, where the food was eaten by those who were hungry, and the only poor people were those who grudged others things.

But he pulled himself up there; it was too idiotic! A voice from the unseen had called him and his out into the day, and then nothing had happened! It had only been to fool them.

Brun often came down to see him. The old librarian missed his young friend.

"Why do you never come in to us now?" he asked.

"What should I do there?" answered Pelle shortly. "The poor man has no use for knowledge; he's everlastingly damned."

He had broken with all that and did not care either about the librarian's visits. It was best for every one to look after himself; the great were no company for such as he. He made no attempt to conceal his ill humor, but Brun took no notice. The latter had moved out into Frederiksberg Avenue in October, and dropped in almost every afternoon on his way home from the library. The children took care to be down there at that time, for he always brought something for them.

Neither Pelle nor Ellen demanded much of life now. They had settled down in resignation side by side like a pair of carthorses that were accustomed to share manger and toil. It would have been a great thing now to have done with that confounded loan, so that they need not go about with their lives in their hands continually; but even that was requiring too much! All that could be scraped together went every month to the money-lender, and they were no nearer the end. On the one hundred and eighty krones (L10) that Pelle had received they had now in all paid off one hundred and twenty (L7), and yet they still owed two hundred and forty (more than L13). It was the "punishment interest" that made it mount up whenever they came only a day or two too late with the instalments or whatever it might be. In any case it was an endless screw that would go on all their life pumping out whatever they could scrape together into the money-lender's pocket.

But now Pelle meant to put an end to this. He had not paid the last instalment and meant to pay no more, but let things go as they liked. "You ought to borrow of Herr Brun and pay off that money-lender," said Ellen, "or else he'll only come down on us and take our furniture." But Pelle was obstinate and would not listen to reason. The consciousness that a parasite had fastened upon him and sucked him dry in spite of all his resistance, made him angry. He would like to see them touching his things!

When the money-lender came to fetch his instalment, Pelle shut the door in his face. For the rest he took everything with the calmness of resignation; but when the subject cropped up, he fired up and did not know what he said. Ellen had to keep silence and let his mood work itself out.

One afternoon he sat working at the basement window. The librarian was sitting on the chair by the door, with a child on each knee, feeding them with dates. Pelle was taking no notice, but bent over his work with the expression of a madman who is afraid of being spoken to. His work did not interest him as it had formerly done, and progressed slowly; a disturbing element had entered, and whenever he could not instantly find a tool, he grew angry and threw the things about.

Brun sat watching him anxiously, though apparently taken up with the children. A pitying expression would have made Pelle furious. Brun guessed that there was some money trouble, but dared not offer his assistance; every time he tried to begin a conversation Pelle repelled him with a cunning look which said: "You're seeking for an opportunity to come with your money, but you won't get it!" Something or other had gone wrong with him, but it would all come right in the end.

A cab stopped outside the door, and three men stepped out and went into the house. A little while after Ellen burst into the workshop. "Pelle!" she cried, without noticing Brun, "they've come to take away our things!" She broke into a fit of weeping, and seeing their mother crying, the children began to cry too.

Pelle rose and seized a hammer. "I'll soon get them out!" he said between his teeth in a low tone as he moved toward the door. He did not hurry, but went with lowered head, not looking at any one.

Brun seized him by the arm and stopped him.

"You forget that there's something called Prison!" he said with peculiar emphasis.

Pelle gazed at him in astonishment, and for a moment it looked as if he were going to strike the old man; then the hammer dropped from his hand and he broke down.



IX

Now and then a comrade from the good old days would come up and want Pelle to go with him to a meeting. Old fighting memories wakened within him. Perhaps it was there the whole point lay. He threw off his leather apron and went. Ellen's eyes followed him to the door, wondering that he could still wish to have anything to do with that after what he had got out of it.

But it was not there after all! He remembered the tremendous ferment in men's minds during the Movement, and it seemed to him that the excitement had died down. People only came forward before the elections, otherwise they went about their own business as if there had never been any rallying idea. They were all organized, but there was nothing new and strong in that fact; they were born—so to speak—in organization, and connected nothing great and elevating with it. His old associates had cooled down remarkably; they must have discovered that success was neither so romantic nor so easy as they had thought. They had no longer simply to open the gate into the land of success and stream through it; there was a long and difficult road before that. So they each arranged his own matters, and disposed of the doubtful future for small present advantages which were immediately swallowed up by the existing conditions.

The Movement had not reached to the bottom. There was an accusation against himself in this fact; it had not been designed with sufficient breadth. Even at that time it had passed over the heads of the inhabitants of the "Ark," and now a large proletariat was left with their own expectations of the future. The good old class of the common people had split up into a class of petty tradesmen—who seemed to be occupied solely in establishing themselves—and this proletariat.

But there was nothing new in this. One stratum moved up and revealed a new one below; it had always been thus in history. Was it then everlastingly determined that at the bottom of existence there should always be the same innumerable crowd of those who were thrust down, who bore the burden of the whole, the great hunger reserve? Was it only possible to be happy when one knew how to push the difficulties down, just as one might push the folds of a material until at last they were heaped up in one place? It was the old question over again. Formerly he had had his clear faith with which to beat down doubt, but now he could not be content with a blind hope; he required to be shown an expedient. If the Movement had failed through having been begun crookedly, the causes with which one had to do were practical causes, and it was possible to do the whole thing over again.

There were also others engaged in taking the whole thing up from the bottom, and through Peter Dreyer he came into contact with young men of an entirely new type. They had emerged from the Movement, shot up surprisingly out of its sediment, and now made new ambitious claims upon life. By unknown paths they had reached the same point as he himself had done, and demanded first and foremost to be human beings. The sacredness of the ego filled them, and made them rebel at all yokes; they began from within by shaking them off, did not smoke or drink, would be slaves to nothing. They kept out of the Movement and had their own places of meeting out about the South Boulevard, where they read and discussed new social forms. They were intelligent, well-paid working-men, who persistently shared the conditions of the proletariat; fanatics who gave away their week's wages if they met a man who was poorer than themselves; hot-headed enthusiasts who awaited revolution. Several of them had been in prison for agitating against the social order. There were also country people among them—sons of the men who stood in the ditches and peat-pits out there. "The little man's children," Morten called them.

These were the offspring of those who had made the Movement; that was how it should go on. By being contented they kept themselves free from the ensnaring expedients of capitalism, they despised the petty tradesman's inclination for comfort, and were always ready for action. In them the departure was at any rate a fact!

They wanted to get hold of Pelle. "Come over to us!" Peter Dreyer often said.

Pelle, however, was not easily enticed out; he had his home where he hid himself like a snail in its shell. He had the responsibility for this little world of five people, and he had not even succeeded in securing it. His strength and industry were not enough even to keep one little home above water; a benefactor was needed for that! It was not the time to tend jealously one's own honor when wife and children would be the sufferers; and now that it was all arranged he felt deeply grateful to the old librarian. It was nevertheless a disgraceful fact which did not encourage him to have anything to do with the affairs of others.

The violent language used by the young men frightened him too. He had rebelled against the old conditions just as they had done, but he met with different experiences. From the time he could crawl he had struggled to accommodate himself to the great connection of things; even the life of the prison had not placed him outside it, but had only united him the more closely with the whole. He had no inclination to cut the knot, but demanded that it should be untied.

"You're no good," said Morten and the others when they tried to rouse him, "for you can't hate." No, the cold in his mind was like the night- frost; it melted at the first sunbeam. When he looked back there were redeeming ties that held the whole together in spite of all the evil; and now the old librarian had brought him close up to the good in the other side of the cleft too. He had settled down to his shoemaking again and refused to be roused by the others' impatience; but he looked as if he had an eternity in which to unravel his affairs.

Sister was often down with him and filled the workshop with her chatter. At about eight, when it began to grow light, he heard her staggering step on the stair, and she remained with him until Ellen took her up in the evening by main force to put her to bed. She dragged all the tools together and piled them up in front of Pelle on the bench so that he could hardly move, and called it helping. Then she rested, standing with her hands upon the edge of the bench and talking to him. "Sister's clever!" she said appreciatively, pointing with satisfaction to her work. "Big girl!" And if he did not answer she repeated it and did not leave off until he had praised her.

"Yes, you're very clever!" he said, "but can you put the things back in their places?"

The child shook her head. "Sister's tired," she declared with decision, and immediately after brought another tool and pushed it slowly up onto the heap while she kept her eyes upon his face to see whether she might do it. "Sister's helping!" she repeated in explanation; but Pelle pretended not to hear.

For a time she was quiet, but then came to him with her pinafore full of old boots and shoes that she had pulled out from behind the stove. He tried to look stern, but had to bend down over his work. It made the little girl feel uncertain. She emptied her pinafore onto the platform, and sitting on her heels with her hands on her little knees, she tried to see what his expression was. It was not satisfactory, so she got up and, putting her hands on his knee, said, with an ingratiating look into his face: "You're so clever, father! You can do everything! You're the cleverest in the whole world!" And after a little pause—"We're both clever, aren't we, father?"

"Oh, that's it, is it!" exclaimed Pelle. "One of us is very conceited at any rate!"

"It's not me!" answered the child confidently, shaking her head.

"You seem to be very happy together," said Ellen when she came down with Boy Comfort on her arm to fetch Anna. The child did not want to go up with her, and pushed round into the corner behind Pelle's chair; and Boy Comfort struggled to be put down onto the floor to play with the lasts. "Well, then," said Ellen, sitting down, "we'll all stay here together."

She looked quiet and resigned; her defeat had told upon her. She no longer spoke of the future, but was glad that they had escaped from the clutches of the money-lender; the thought of it filled her with a quiet but not altogether unspoiled happiness. She no longer dreamed of anything better, but was grateful for what she possessed; and it seemed to Pelle that something had died within her together with the dissatisfaction. It was as though she had at last given everything she had; her resignation to the gray everyday life made her dull and ordinary. "She needs sunshine," he thought.

And again his thoughts wandered in their search for a way out into the future—his one idea—in the same track that they had followed a hundred times before. He did not even enter it fully, but merely recognized that the problem was being worn threadbare. In his trade there was no compromise; there was only room for extortioners and extortionized, and he was not suited for either part. When he took up other possibilities, however, his thoughts returned of themselves to his work, like a roving dog that always comes back and snuffs at the same scent. There was something in him that with fatalistic obstinacy made him one with his trade, in spite of its hopelessness; he had staked everything there, and there the question should be solved. Behind the fatalism of the common people lies the recognition that there is plan and perspective in their life too; such and such a thing is so because it must be so. And this recognition Pelle had no reason to do away with.

He grew confused with the continual dwelling of his thoughts on the same subject, but it seemed to possess him, was with him while he slept, and seized him as soon as he awoke. There was an old dream that persistently haunted him at this time—a forgotten youthful idea from his earliest participation in the rising, the plan for a common workshop that would make the court shoemaker superfluous. The plan had been laid aside at the time as impossible, but now he took it up again and went over it step by step. He could easily find some capable, reliable fellow-workmen who would stand by him through thick and thin with regard to work and profits; and there would be no difficulty about discipline, for during the past years the workmen had learned to subordinate themselves to their own people. Here was a way for the small man to assert himself within his trade and join the development; what one was not able to do could be done by several joining together, namely, turn the modern technics to account and divide the work into sections. He arranged it all most carefully, and went over it again and again to make sure that every detail was correct. When he slept he dreamed of his system of profit-sharing, and then it was a fact. He stood working in a bright room among comrades; there was no master and no servant, the machinery whirred, and the workmen sang and whistled while they minded it. Their hours of labor were short, and they all had happy homes waiting for them.

It was hard to wake up and know the reality. Alas! all the cleverest and most industrious hands in the world had no influence in their several trades—could not so much as sew a single stitch—until capital started them. If that refused its support, they could do nothing at all, but were cut off, as it were, at once.

Machinery cost money. Pelle could get the latter from Brun, the old man having often enough offered him capital to start something or other; but he already owed him money, and capital might run his undertaking down. It was at its post, and allowed no activity of that kind beside it. He was seized with uncertainty; he dared not venture the stakes.

The old philosopher came almost daily. Pelle had become a part of his life, and he watched his young friend's condition with anxiety. Was it the prison life—or was it perhaps the books—that had transformed this young man, who had once gone ahead with tempestuous recklessness, into a hesitating doubter who could not come to a decision? Personality was of doubtful value when it grew at the expense of energy. It had been the old man's hope that it would have developed greater energy through being replanted in fresh, untouched soil, and he tried to rouse Pelle out of his lethargy.

Pelle gave an impatient jerk. They were poking him up on all sides, wanting him to come to a decision, and he could not see his way to it. Of course he was half asleep; he knew it himself. He felt that he wanted rest; his entity was working for him out there in the uncertainty.

"I don't know anything," he said, half irritated, "so what can be the use? I thought books would lead me to a place from which I could bring everything together; but now I'm all abroad. I know too much to dash on blindly, and too little to find the pivot on which the whole thing turns. It doesn't matter what I touch, it resolves itself into something for and something against." He laughed in desperation.

One day Brun brought him a book. "This book," he said with a peculiar smile, "has satisfied many who were seeking for the truth. Let's see whether it can satisfy you too!" It was Darwin's "Origin of Species."

Pelle read as in a mist. The point lay here—the whole thing powerfully put into one sentence! His brain was in a ferment, he could not lay the book down, but went on reading all night, bewitched and horrified at this merciless view. When Ellen in surprise came down with his morning coffee, he had finished the book. He made no reply to her gentle reproaches, but drank the coffee in silence, put on his hat and went out into the deserted streets to cool his burning brow.

It was very early and the working-men had not yet turned out; at the morning coffee-rooms the shutters were just being taken down; warmly- clad tram-men were tramping through the streets in their wooden-soled boots; slipshod, tired women ran stumbling along to their early jobs, shivering with cold and weary of life, weary before they had begun their day. Here and there a belated woman toiled along the street carrying a clothes-basket, a mother taking her baby to the creche before she went to her work.